A view of the garden behind Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, England.
The quick scoop: if you are interested in purchasing items with my watercolor paintings on them, go to:
https://www.zazzle.com/janeaustenart
There you will find all sorts of lovely products available with watercolors I have painted, inspired by locales where Jane Austen lived. Notecards, planners, mugs, trays, prints--all sorts of great swag.
One of the best recommendations came from my daughter, who looked at the website and said “Good thing you told me you made these, Mom, or I would have bought some of this for you for Christmas.”
Now here is the background, in case you want more history:
Several years ago, knowing my love for Jane Austen, another one of my daughters gave me a wonderful book for Christmas (do you sense a theme here? Daughters + Christmas + Jane Austen) called A Walk with Jane Austen, by Lori Smith.
I loved the book, and in reading it, realized that the author actually lived in Northern Virginia; then I discovered that she actually went to my church! After hearing her speak there, I introduced myself, and a friendship was born that has grown deep, as we relate to one another not just as Austen aficionados, but as artists digging deep into our vocations.
A view of the city of Bath.
This past summer, Lori approached me with the idea that we collaborate on this project: I would create lovely paintings of places relating to Jane Austen from the photographs Lori had taken while traveling and researching her book. Lori would work with the website Zazzle to have my paintings made into beautiful products, and she would do all the marketing (thank you, Lori!). And so it was launched just a few weeks ago.
I’ve made six different paintings so far. And there will be more! Hopefully, this will be lucrative enough to allow us to go back to England, where I can make even more paintings, on site!
You can follow Jane Austen Art on Facebook, or on Instagram @jane.austen.art.